As people move throughout a geographic area they may come upon unfamiliar locations and/or settings. It would be useful if people could leave information relevant to an area for others to discover as they pass through the area, e.g., a review of a restaurant or a comment regarding a particular point of interest that other individuals, e.g., members of a particular group, might find of interest. For example, while in a national park a visitor might find it helpful if he could find a suggestion from a person with a common interest, e.g., bird watching or watching sunsets, suggesting a good vista or bird watching location. People from particular countries may find it useful or helpful to receive locally applicable suggestions and/or comments regarding a particular location, e.g., suggestions with regard to restaurants where the waiters speak a particular language or have food that the visitors are accustomed to eating.
While the Internet affords an opportunity for storing information through use of online reviews of products and services, comments on blogs, community-provided data on applications such as Google Earth and so forth, there are drawbacks with the current system. A drawback with the current system is that one must actually know what he wants to search for before accessing the information. Consider for example that you are walking down a street in an unfamiliar city and wanted to find out what other people had to say who were in similar situations. You would typically need to perform many different web searches to find a satisfactory amount of relevant information and, in many cases, might have no idea as to what to search for on the Internet or which web sites to check.
Another problem with Internet based reviews and comments are that a person may not have easy access to the Internet while at or near a site of interest, e.g., passing through a park, down a street or near a restaurant. Thus an individual seeking information may be unable to obtain access to the stored Internet based information when it is needed. In addition, an individual may not be inclined to submit an Internet based review or comment at a later time. Also, Internet based reviews or comments, which are submitted at later time and different location than the site of interest may tend to be less accurate than if the review or comment could have been stored while the individual was at the location of interest.
Peer to peer communications devices are becoming increasingly common and many devices which support telephone communications and/or Internet access are beginning to also support peer to peer communications. Peer to peer communications may occur in locations even where Internet access may not be readily available.
In view of the above discussion, it should be appreciated that there is a need for improved methods and apparatus for making locally relevant information available to people as they pass through a particular area. It should be appreciated that at least some methods and apparatus make it easy for people passing through an area to discover information that may be of interest without the need to actively search for such information, e.g., via the Internet. In addition to allowing individuals to discover locally relevant information it would be desirable if individuals could add to the local body of information thereby building up the base of locally available and discoverable reviews, comments and/or suggestions over time.